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DiManno: Mayor Rob Ford is no longer a laughing matter, should be recalled

“The sad fact is that, in this town, it’s a whole lot easier to get rid of a broken blender than it is to recall a rogue politician. And that’s not right.’’

That was Rocco Rossi speaking during the last municipal election campaign, before he withdrew from the mayor’s race.

Yet his woefully low polling numbers did receive a significant bump — 10 per cent, according to one telephone survey — when he proposed instituting a recall mechanism for tossing out incompetent or maladroit elected politicians before their term was up.

Sounds like an even better idea now, two years into rogue Rob Ford’s hapless administration.

This has turned into an unprecedented disaster and endless embarrassment for the city. I’m not laughing anymore. It stopped being funny four or five controversies ago.

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Ford’s diehard loyalists will no doubt claim the mayor’s enemies — on council, in the media, under a rock — are relentlessly picking on the guy, inflating out of proportion every small misstep, each incident of poor judgment, all the quirks of personality that many still haul out as defence and excuse: It’s just Rob’s way.

But that way is now the stuff of a pending court verdict on conflict of interest allegations, a scathing report by the city’s ombudsman, and serial scandals that go to the heart of Ford’s character, his ethics. He can’t just figuratively give the finger to his critics or cower behind “no comment’’ silent treatment of reporters. When even wickedly funny cartoonist Andy Donato is carving Ford a new one on the editorial page of the Toronto Sun — the newspaper that unabashedly champions Ford — then the whole spin-spun edifice of The Little Big Guy at city hall is clearly crumbling.

There are certainly a few stalwart allies still clinging to the mayor’s tattered coattails because they surfed into council prominence on his backdraft after spending years submerged in backbench waters. So Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti predictably shifts the blame to city staff for the pounding unleashed Thursday by Ombudsman Fiona Crean, who accused the mayor’s office of conducting a rushed, compromised and interfering selection process in the appointment of ordinary folk to 120 powerful civic committees. See, it’s their fault for inadequately screening recruitment candidates after the mayor’s office issued a hurry-up order and their tangle-footed ineptness in dancing to Ford’s quick-time tune which caused all kinds of staff strain. “If you’re not used to that kind of stress, then maybe you shouldn’t be there,’’ Mammoliti sniffed.

Ergo, of course it’s down to an unidentified minion who unilaterally asked for the removal from a newspaper ad of the statement encouraging applicants from the city’s “diverse communities’’ (which wasn’t done) and, further, to not place ads with the Star, merely the city’s (and country’s) largest circulation paper.

But — goodness no — that had nothing to do with Ford’s well-documented feud with the Star.

Besides, Ford’s fear and loathing of the media has now extended to generic reporter-baiting. This vendetta against “pricks,’’ “pathological liars’’ and “sucky little kids’’ is being waged primarily by Ford’s older arm-around brother Doug, the cruder half of the Ford tag-team. How Doug Ford, a neophyte first term councillor, morphed into Big Foot (in Mouth) at city hall, a quasi deputy mayor, is perplexing — except that he’s plainly his brother’s keeper. And Rob Ford clearly needs one.

To review: conflict of interest allegations over soliciting donations from city hall lobbyists to his private football foundation; leaving an executive council meeting to attend his team’s practice; deploying an aide in his office to help coach the team; using a city of Toronto car to get there; personally asking city officials to authorize road and drainage repairs outside his family company’s business in time for its 50th anniversary celebration; menacingly confronting a journalist beyond his family home’s backyard fence and levelling unsupported accusations the reporter had been spying on him.

On Friday, the Star also revealed that Earl Provost, one of Ford’s top advisers and briefly his interim chief of staff, personally urged Queen’s Park to help bankroll $2.8 million in renovations to Don Bosco Catholic Secondary School, where the mayor coaches two football teams. The province turned a deaf ear.

These are not frivolous breaches of municipal rules governing code of conduct. Ford has time and again used both his own influence as mayor and city resources for personal benefit, even when that benefit has accrued to a charitable foundation close to his heart. That might absolve the blunder — once. But Ford’s a repeat offender. He denies, deflects and dissembles. He’s made a mockery of the virtues that floated his electoral campaign: straight-shooting and no more entitlements.

It’s a pity that Rocco Rossi’s recall proposal — which would have needed approval from Queen’s Park — went by the wayside. A poll by Forum Research showed whopping 73 per cent approval among the public, regardless of which candidate they supported. Most pols were quick to give a thumbs down, though, arguing a recall option would make for “perpetual politics’’ at city hall — you know, unlike what we have now.

At the time, the Star asked Ford for his opinion on the recall pitch.

He did not respond.

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